iQIYI Becomes Most Popular Free App in China Apple App Store

Popularity of iQIYI's self-produced content drives significant growth in paid subscribers

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Jul 06, 2015, 10:00 ET

BEIJING, July 6, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- iQIYI, an independently operated subsidiary of Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) and one of the largest internet and mobile video service providers in China, today announced that the company's mobile app has become No.1 in the free app popularity rankings and No.2 among all the apps in the China Apple App store, driven by the popularity of iQIYI self-produced content.

On July 3, iQIYI released the full series of its self-produced TV show The Lost Tomb to its paid subscribers. In order to watch the full series, a huge number of users downloaded the iQIYI app and purchased the subscription service, with the number of user clicks on The Lost Tomb episodes surpassing 160 million within five minutes following the release. Since its release, episodes of The Lost Tomb have been viewed over one billion times.

"Providing access to premium online TV content to paid subscribers is a promising new frontier in China's online-video industry," said Yu Gong, founder and CEO of iQIYI. "The success of The Lost Tomb demonstrates the huge potential of iQIYI's subscription service to drive enormous traffic to our platform by providing high-quality content and excellent user experience."

On June 15^th, iQIYI announced that it has reached five million paid streaming subscribers. The company also recently announced that through its cooperation with Paramount, iQIYI will have access to Paramount's movie library with over 800 titles and to all new Paramount movies for the next three years.

About iQIYI

iQIYI, launched on April 22, 2010, is an independently operated subsidiary of Baidu, the world's largest Chinese search engine. Since its launch, iQIYI has pursued the ultimate online video experience for Chinese users, becoming an industry model in promoting innovation in products, technologies, and marketing.

On May 7, 2013, iQIYI announced a merger with PPS. According to IUT data released by iResearch in December 2014, iQIYI and PPS were among the leaders in the industry in terms of all-platform unique visitors and monthly effective viewing duration. As of December 2014, iQIYI's mobile app (including iQIYI and PPS) was running on 860 million devices, with mobile traffic accounting for 63% of the sites' total traffic. The monthly viewing time on iQIYI and PPS surpassed 1 billion hours for three successive months in 2014. According to data from November and December 2014, mobile accounted for 1.17 billion hours of monthly viewing time on iQIYI, and PCs accounted for 1.15 billion hours. Unique visitors per day on iQIYI reached 44.27 million on mobile devices and 44.18 million on PCs.

In the future, iQIYI will continue to pursue providing customers with ever richer video content and a ceaselessly improving viewing experience.

For media inquiries, please contact:

iQIYI Inc.
Sophie Yu
Director of International Communications
[email protected]

Foote Group
Yajun Zhang
+86 (10) 8429-9544
[email protected]

SOURCE iQIYI